NASA took a step closer to landing men – and women – on Mars as they put their Orion spacecraft into orbit yesterday.

It roared through the clouds aboard a 24-storey rocket after blasting off from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Launch commentator Mike Curie said: “Lift-off at dawn. The dawn of Orion, for a new era of American space exploration.”

The launch marked the start of a four-hour 24-minute test flight intended to take the unmanned capsule twice around Earth.

Orion reached an altitude of 3600 miles then re-entered the atmosphere at 20,000mph.

The module is the first NASA have designed to go further than a low Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 Moon mission. It’s a larger version of the capsules that went to the Moon but is kitted out with cutting-edge gear.

NASA are working on a more powerful rocket to send Orion on its way. It will be tested in 2017-18.

The first crewed mission will be in 2021-22 – then humans will go to the Moon, an asteroid or Mars.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden said: “I would describe it as the beginning of the Mars era.”

Orion’s crew module splashed down in the Pacific and will be brought ashore for tests.

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How many times, according to the SPCA, have pets and wild animals been targeted by airguns in one year?